Audrey Tawdry and Rebecca Webb work in both divergent and parallel universes of words and images; they are at once photofiles, dendrophiles, logophiles, and naturae-philes.

Audrey is attracted to boulders and rocks and stones linguistically/IRL. For her, big rocks have been good places to ask hard or impossible questions about change and adaption, about time, about success, about color and texture. She means that in the way that she uses them as metaphors or allegory, but also sitting on a rock can be a literal good place to think about things. Writing in/through/with the natural world helps in figuring out how she, a human, fits in there with the internet and ceramic toilets and gore-tex, etc.

Rebecca is also attracted to boulders but also to Manzanitas, Octotillos, pink skies, wind, fabric, and the grand scheme of nature. She is interested in temporarily interposing a new way of experiencing and seeing landscape in still and motion photography. The deserts o the southwest have offered Rebecca an opportunity for awe and wonder and a sense of belonging.

In these spaces, Audrey and Rebecca found similar and complementary interests. While both appreciate and drift towards unfiltered natural experiences, in these pieces they confront the frames and projections that inevitably collapse the idea of purity. What are two strangers talking about when they talk about nature? How does language and culture frame our understanding and experience of nature?

Audrey Tawdry has never met a bird she didn't love. She actually asked several birds to marry her and they said yes. She gets to run a kitchen in Portland, OR, and a bird-watching club, and she gets to go rock climbing. She rides a green bicycle and today she ate some really good strawberries - life is good! Her poetry can be found maybe later.

Rebecca Webb received her BFA from the School Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University. Her background is in painting, printmaking and film. She was awarded her second William MAle Foundation Grant for a forthcoming photo project. Her photo-based series Hado was installed at the San Diego Airport in a juried exhibition for two years. Webb's photography work is in the collections of MCASD's former director Hugh Davies, The City of San Diego, Museum of Photographic Arts, Joseph Bellows Gallery, OJB Landscape Architects, Thomas Kellner, and others.

@rebeccawebbstudio